A Georgia judge has released parts of a highly anticipated report on whether former President Donald Trump and allies broke the law in their attempts to overturn his election loss.
The report summarises a two-year grand jury probe into their conduct after Trump lost the state in 2020. It says the grand jury believes some witnesses – who weren’t named – committed perjury in their evidence to the panel. Trump was never asked to testify.
But dozens of witnesses, including several prominent Republicans, were interviewed by the special grand jury.
Much of the brief report – pages two through seven – remains hidden from the public. Only its introduction, conclusion and a section detailing perjury concerns were unsealed on Thursday.
The latter section states: “A majority of the Grand Jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more of the witnesses testifying before it.”
The unsealed portions of the report do not reveal which witnesses may have lied under oath.
According to the order from the judge, the full report provided just that: “a roster of who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia,” McBurney wrote. Those recommendations, however, are “for the District Attorney’s eyes only — for now,” McBurney ordered.
. . . . “Ambassador Norman Eisen (ret.), a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institute who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2020, told ABC News that despite the judge shielding most of the report, “it’s clear from the judge’s order that the grand jury recommended charges. The question is: I don’t think that if people are being charged, Trump can logically be left out, because he was the ringleader,” Eisen told ABC News. “He was the mastermind of the plots.”
Eisen pointed to McBurney’s note that the report gave recommendations regarding “who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what. Really, if no one was being indicted, there would be no need to say, ‘for what,'” Eisen said. “That second clause only makes sense if someone is getting indicted.”
ABC
Willis on Monday told Atlanta ABC News affiliate WSB that she was “very pleased” with the order.
According to the BBC article, the grand jury interviewed 75 witnesses before it was dissolved last month, including Mr Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.
After parts of the report were unsealed, Mr Graham told CNN he was confident in the testimony he gave and said he hadn’t heard from the district attorney’s office since appearing before the jury.
Donald Trump has responded to the partial release of the Fulton County grand jury report, which recommended that one or more witnesses be charged with perjury.In a statement, he repeated his long-held belief that he committed no crimes when he repeatedly asked Georgia’s secretary of State to “find” nearly 12,000 votes in his name.“The long awaited important sections of the Georgia report, which do not even mention President Trump’s name, have nothing to do with the President because President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong,” reads the statement from his office. “The President participated in two perfect phone calls regarding election integrity in Georgia, which he is entitled to do – in fact, as President, it was President Trump’s Constitutional duty to ensure election safety, security, and integrity. Between the two calls, there were many officials and attorneys on the line, including the Secretary of State of Georgia, and no one objected, even slightly protested, or hung up. President Trump will always keep fighting for true and honest elections in America!” it continued.
The Independent
